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Show EXCHANGE IS NO ROBBERY. V TliU'f anil a Vagrant Traded Identities tor Mutual Advantage. Itr re is a bald statement of facts, says the Pall Mall Gazette, and it reads like ia ingenious bit of fiction. It only happened recently, and the authority is the report of the police office. A poor man wandering in the Paris streets came up to a constable and entreated to be arrested. He said he was penniless and hungry, and that at the lockup he would at least get a bed and a breakfast. break-fast. The constable took him at his word took him, in fact, into custody and he was locked up for the night. In the loekup he met a thief, whose antecedents ante-cedents were rather troubled, but who had great hopes for the future if he could only escape. The one wanted liberty, lib-erty, the other wanted money, and they had all the night to make their arrangements. arrange-ments. When the morning came a bargain bar-gain was struck. The thief was able either to produce or to guarantee fifty francs, and in consideration of that it came to a change of identities. When the roll was called over each of the two prisoners answered for the other. The thief came in for some pity, some sympathetic sym-pathetic advice and his liberty. He accepted ac-cepted all three anil made immediate and excellent use of the last. The other prisoner was "put back." But the fraud was discovered it was almost inevitable inevita-ble that it should. He was brought up again and sentenced to fifteen days' imprisonment im-prisonment for conspiting to defeat the ends of just:ce. 1 he report says he was delighted with the sentence and returned re-turned to his cell in triumph. The story would have seemed improbable in a novel; but fancy the satisfaction of the bona-fide thief when he read the report. |